Improve documentation and training materials

[biosafetylvl5]

🌈 Overview

Documentation is important for any software package and has become a pain-point for GeoIPS as it has transitioned from being an internal tool for NRL to being used operationally and by the open-source community. Documentation and training materials are required for GeoIPS usage to grow.

Documentation and training materials for GeoIPS have improved over the last couple of years. NRL has implemented a well-thought-out template for the documentation and the GeoIPS team has been adding to it. Additionally, NRL and CIRA have collaboratively developed a live tutorial to train users on how to install, use, and develop GeoIPS. This has been presented several times over the past couple of years to audiences of 50+ participants.

An effort is required to bring GeoIPS documentation and training materials up to date with the current state of the code. Additionally, research is required to identify methods for maintaining the documentation and training materials to ensure that they do not fall behind the current state of GeoIPS.

Goal

Improve GeoIPS Documentation and our workflow around documenting to set us up for success in continued documenting.

🔬 Scope

• This includes Documentation of
  - Coding Standards
  - Workflows
  - Code (microscale - at the function level)
  - Code (macroscale - at the conceptual level)

🥇 Defining Done

• Assess the current state of the documentation to identify and list all deficiencies.
• Update the documentation to address all deficiencies.
• Develop and implement a development workflow step to ensure that documentation is always updated as appropriate when code changes.
• Request feedback from the user community.
• Apply updates as suggested by the user community.
• As the GeoIPS GUIs are developed, CIRA will assist with developing training materials for the GUIs.

External Files

Our planning document lives here.